How to Win Friends & Influence People

How to Win Friends and Influence People is one of the classics of the self-help genre, and still holds up today, with lots of examples. Carnegie’s principles are simple: stop being such a sourpuss, appreciate other people, avoid fights, and they’ll come around to your point of view soon enough. Leadership consists more of praise than of scolding. Become the means by which other people fulfill their desires.

As always, the devil’s in the details: How does one genuinely appreciate and become interested in other human beings, flawed and mundane as many of them are? How do you balance your own bad habits of braggadocio and point scoring with applying these methods in the moment?

Well, we’ll see.